Originally Marjolein Lips-Wiersma surveyed people from a variety of backgrounds and a wide range of roles, including professional, managerial, blue collar and administrative.on what gives meaning to their work. Marjolein summarised their answers in the Holistic Development Model.

The Model was tested by Marjolein, Lani Morris and Patricia Greenhough with hundreds of people in workshops, lectures, and in organisational and therapeutic interventions. We double-checked it's relevance and robustness with a further twenty colleagues (academics, community workers, consultants, managers and coaches) who use the model in their work.

In 2010 we quantitatively tested the model on 500 participants from a wide variety of ages, occupations and cultures. This confirmed that the model captures the content and process of meaningful work.

After seventeen years of testing the Model in this wide range of ways, in an ever-expanding range of countries (including Romania, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil) we have reached a point where we know the model is robust, relevant and very useful.

In 2011 after we published the book The Map of Meaning, we decided to rename the Holistic Development Model, the Map of Meaning.

"The map does not bestow wisdom from on high but releases it from within."